The Woman He Loved Before (10 page)

I want her to wake up. I want her to wake up and to speak and to tell me everything will be OK. That’s unfair, I know. It should be the other way around, it should be me being strong and resilient, promising in word and deed that we’ll get through this. How can I, though, when she is lying in a hospital bed looking like this?

libby

I have been unconscious for twenty hours. Or so I’ve been told.

I have woken up in a hospital room surrounded by equipment and with a sense that nothing is real. I feel so disconnected from the world around me and from the body I’m in. I’m not sure if it’s pain or if it’s the painkillers, but I keep wanting to touch things to make sure they are solid and real, but at the same time I’m scared to do so in case they aren’t. In case they melt away or go spongy at my touch – then it would mean I am still asleep. Or never going to wake up.

My parents, Angela, Grace, Rupert, Caleb, Benji, and Jack’s parents – Harriet and Hector – are waiting outside while the doctor and Jack piece together what has happened. So far they have told me that I was unconscious for twenty hours instead of the planned twenty-four because once they’d reduced the drugs keeping me asleep, I woke up; I lost a lot of blood, and needed a fair amount before and during surgery; I underwent surgery to repair my ruptured spleen, which was a complete success; I have a hairline fracture of a rib on my left side and severe bruising on the others; I have severe bruising on the left side of my body that will get better over time; the crash had been caused by a man using his mobile phone who wasn’t paying attention so misjudged the space he had to do the crazy manoeuvre he tried.

What they are actually telling me is that I am lucky to be alive. And I keep bursting into tears.

My weeping doesn’t last very long, but every time I cry the doctor stops talking and waits for me to calm down, to snuffle up my tears or allow them to dry on my face, because I cannot touch anything – least of all myself – in case it is not real. In case I am not real.

They are keeping something from me, I can tell. I don’t know what it is, but it is something big. I think I can still walk because if I tried to move my legs they would; I know I can speak because I told the doctor my name and the date when he asked.

I wish they would tell me what is wrong. Thick vines of fear are quickly taking root in my mind and body, and will soon grow out of control and I’ll find it almost impossible to think or breathe.

I wish, too, that Jack would hold my hand, stand nearer, look at me more. He is so distant, removed, while standing right beside me. If this was real I would be able to feel the heat from his body. Maybe he isn’t here. Maybe he isn’t real. Maybe that is what the doctor is keeping from me. Maybe he died.

Panicked, suddenly, not caring if the world is spongy and unreal, I reach out an aching, heavy arm to touch him. He is as solid and real as anything can be right now. He is warm, not like a ghost would be. And he flinches. Instinctively, automatically, he flinches at my touch, pulling away slightly. I stop listening to the doctor and shift as much as I can to look at him, to try to understand why he would not want me to touch him.

‘Jack?’ I say.

‘Libby?’ he replies, turning to me. He is trying to control his face, he is trying not to breakdown. This is about her. About Eve. About me almost doing to him what she did.

One night, about three months after we decided to get married, he got so drunk he could barely make it to the bedroom in my little flat. When he collapsed fully clothed on the bed, he started asking me to promise I wouldn’t die first. If I had to die, I was to let him know so he could finish himself off and not have to live without me. ‘I can’t,’ he said, ‘bury another wife.’

He’s probably been holding in the terror that he would have to go through that all over again.

‘Nothing,’ I say, easing myself back onto the pillows propping me up. ‘Nothing.’

Jack nods and returns his attention to the doctor.

My husband is scared, and hurt, and angry with me too. He had taken my silent refusal to make him any such promise as agreeing that I would not die first. And now, of course, I have nearly broken that promise.

‘The final thing I wanted to talk to you about was the lacerations you suffered to your head and face,’ the doctor says gently.

‘OK,’ I say, resolving not to cry this time. Jack’s hand suddenly finds mine, making me jump, and the fear squeezes me so tight I can’t breathe.

‘There’s no easy way to tell you this, Mrs Britcham, but you sustained rather extensive damage to your scalp, meaning we had to shave away a significant proportion of the left side of your hair in order to be able to repair the damage.’

My hair? My free hand goes up to my head, but there is a bandage around it and I cannot feel any shaved areas. In fact, I can still feel the soft black strands that make up my hair. I run my fingers through them, and they feel real, they feel like they have not been damaged or shaved. Maybe he is being melodramatic and they only had to take away a small part, which, with clever styling, I can hide until it grows back.

‘There has also been some damage to your face, ostensibly on the left side. We expect you to make a complete recovery from these injuries, and the surgeon who worked on your face did the best he could to not leave a trace, but there will be some scarring.’

‘How much scarring?’ I ask cautiously. This is the point where I usually burst into tears, but I do not feel like doing that at the moment. I feel like throwing back the covers and running around, looking for a mirror.

‘They were very serious injuries and, as I explained, quite extensive.’ Extensive injuries did not result in ‘some’ scarring.

I look at Jack. He is staring at the doctor, trying to control his face, trying not to cry. Now I know why Jack hasn’t looked at me: he knows how bad it is.

‘I need a mirror,’ I say to the doctor.

‘I don’t think that would be helpful right now.’

‘I need a mirror!’ I say, desperation and fear making my voice rise.

‘Tomorrow,’ the doctor insists evenly. ‘We’ll be removing your dressings then, so you will be able to see your injuries then.’

Tomorrow? Do you have any idea how far away tomorrow is when something like this has been dropped onto your shoulders?

‘I’ll send the nurse in to teach you how to manage your pain relief. Try and get some sleep, Mrs Britcham.’

‘Thanks, doctor,’ Jack says as the doctor leaves the room.

I reach up to the left side of my face, feel the sticky dressing covering a fair portion of it. Most of my face feels thick and swollen and tender. More than a touch causes needles of pain shooting through my face and scalp.

‘Is it bad?’ I ask Jack.

Slowly, as though he can’t avoid it any longer, Jack finally turns to look at me. ‘I don’t know, I haven’t seen anything.’

‘But they think it’s bad, don’t they?’

He suddenly comes down to my height, enclosing my hand in both of his, as though trying to protect as well as comfort me. ‘No matter what, we’re going to get through this together,’ he says. ‘Everything’s going to be all right.’

I nod, knowing that he doesn’t believe that any more than I do.

libby

I’ve never thought of myself as ugly.

By the same token, I have never really looked in the mirror and seen myself as outstandingly beautiful. It often amazes me that other people do. That they can make such firm judgements on themselves – especially the ones who aspire to be models – by simply looking in a mirror.

I am looking at myself in the mirror, and I am seeing myself for the first time.

I am not ugly.

My black-brown eyes are surrounded by whites that are threaded and veined with red. My nose is wide and flat, my skin is an even-toned dark brown that has always been easily invigorated with a little foundation. My forehead is gently curved, my chin is small and unobtrusive. My lips are wide and full.

I am not ugly. A little tired looking, maybe, but that is not surprising considering the last forty-eight hours. But I do not fundamentally look any different. This is who I am. This is who I have been my entire adult life. And I am not ugly.

Until I allow my eyes to properly focus, to stop the Libby in the mirror from being a slight blur, then I can see who I am now. Today. This minute.

On the left side of my face, from my ear to about a quarter of
the way up my hairline, and then straight back to the nape of my neck, I have no hair. Instead, I have a bald, brown scalp with a jagged, blood-red scar that is held together by thick black stitches. That’s where my head collided with the partially open window causing the skin to split open, like the skin of a tomato peels apart after it has been in boiling water.

From the middle of my nose to the middle of my cheek, running in a straight tangent, is another dark-red line, but this one is thin and has tiny, careful stitches that are the work – apparently – of a master surgeon. This scar is from where a piece of metal – probably from the car’s roof – sliced across my face as we were crushed against the lamppost.

The left side of my face is scattered with scratches that will fade to nothing over time. These are from flying, shattered glass.

I am lucky that the force of the crash didn’t cause the open window to crack my skull; I am lucky the metal didn’t scrape a bit higher because it could have hit my eye; I am lucky I was wearing a seatbelt so that the internal injuries were limited to my spleen; I am lucky I had a fireman to talk to me and keep me awake, to stop me falling into a coma I probably never would have woken up from. I am lucky to be alive. I am lucky.

That’s why huge, gut-wrenching sobs keep quaking my body but escape as small gasping whimpers; that’s why my eyes are swimming with tears that don’t fall. I am lucky. Everything I am seeing in the mirror means I am lucky to be alive.

‘The repair work on your face has been very successful, so with the right after-care the scarring should be minimal,’ the doctor explains gently as the nurse takes the square mirror away from me. I don’t need the mirror any more, the image of myself – changed and branded – is clear in my mind, burnt like a holographic image onto my eyelids. ‘And your hair will grow back around the areas that are damaged on your scalp,’ he adds, even more gently.

When the nurse removed the mirror, Jack’s hand took its place. ‘You can wear a scarf or something around your hair until it does,’
he adds, helpfully. I change my gaze to him, realising that he’s known me less than three years. He doesn’t know me as having anything other than long, straight black hair. He knows I have my roots re-straightened every eight weeks, but he doesn’t know how long I searched for a hairdresser who wouldn’t damage my hair, rip me off, or keep me waiting for hours. He has no idea that I spent years travelling all over London, sometimes further afield, looking for the right hairdresser. He has no clue that even when I moved to Brighton I had to keep going to London to see my hairdresser until I happened to meet Angela, a mobile hairdresser who was fantastic and professional.

He doesn’t understand what it means to be a black woman trying to have her hair looked after properly. Which is why it is easy for him to say I can wear a scarf or something until my hair grows back – he has no idea that it will take maybe a decade to get it back to this length.

‘When can I go home?’ I ask the doctor, ignoring what Jack has said because this is not the time to try to explain it to him.

‘You’re making excellent progress, so I should think you could be home in a week or so.’

‘OK. Thank you.’

‘Thank you,’ Jack echoes as the doctor nods and leaves the room.

I am lucky to be alive
, I tell myself as the nurse fusses around me, straightening the sheet, making sure that my pain medication dispenser is close to hand.

I am lucky to be alive.

I am lucky to be alive.

I am lucky to be alive.

I am going to keep saying that to myself until the horror that is bubbling up in my mind goes away.
It doesn’t matter what I look like, I am lucky to be alive
.

Before I know it, before I can stop myself, my shoulders are shaking and I’m breaking down again. This time not so quietly, not with any of the dignity I have been trying to maintain.

‘Oh God, Libby, don’t cry,’ Jack says, desperately. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I wish it was me that was hurt and not you. I’d do anything to take your pain away. I’m so sorry.’

‘I know, I know,’ I say. ‘I just …’

‘It’s going to be OK.’ Jack easily fills the gap where my words have failed. ‘It’s going to be OK, that’s what the doctor said. We’ll get you the best care, a nurse at home if necessary. You’ll be better in no time and you’ll hardly be able to notice the scarring, especially once your hair starts to grow back. Time will fly by and we’ll get you well again. It’s going to be OK, I promise.’

I let him speak because he needs to. He is feeling guilty, and scared. I know Jack, I know he’ll be terrified that I’ll hate him for this, that I’ll always blame him because I’d reminded him more than once to have the airbag seen to. ‘You do realise that my little car is probably safer than yours to drive right now?’ I’d told him. And he’d meant to get it done, I know he had. I don’t blame him.